Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian Prime Minister Stephen
Harper said his government will continue to pursue its goal of
loosening the grip of the nation’s biggest wireless providers
following an airwaves auction that saw Quebecor Inc. position
itself to become a national carrier.

“We want to see at least four players in all markets
across the country,” Harper said today in an interview with
Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal on a flight back to
Ottawa from a North American leaders’ summit in Mexico. “I
don’t think it necessarily has to be the same four players, but
I think we have seen some evidence elsewhere to suggest that the
oligopolistic tendencies of the industry tend to break down a
little bit as you move from three to four.”

Harper said the auction, which raised a higher than
expected C$5.3 billion ($4.8 billion), will bolster his
government’s efforts to lower prices for mobile-phone services
to “internationally competitive” levels.

“This auction doesn’t guarantee we will achieve everything
we want to achieve in terms of competition and price, but I
think everything we’ve been doing over the last several years
has been leading in this direction,” he said. “This confirms
we’re on the right track and we’re certainly prepared to take
additional steps if necessary to achieve our objectives.”

Airwaves Auction

Harper’s government has been trying to boost competition in
the wireless industry of the world’s 11th largest economy by
encouraging new entrants to compete with the nation’s three
biggest carriers, Rogers Communications Inc., BCE Inc. and Telus
Corp. The policy has created friction with the three incumbents,
who produced an ad campaign last year accusing the government of
rigging the auction to favor big foreign companies such as
Verizon Communications Inc.

The auction of airwaves in the 700 Megahertz band
restricted the amount of prime spectrum blocks the incumbents
could acquire. Rogers purchased 22 licenses for C$3.3 billion,
while BCE bought 31 for C$566 million and Telus acquired 30 for
C$1.1 billion. Quebecor’s Videotron unit picked up 7 licenses
for C$233 million. No foreign carriers bid.

Observers had predicted a smaller windfall for the
government after foreign bidders pulled out. New York-based
Verizon Communications Inc. said in September it wouldn’t join
the auction after expressing interest earlier. Wind Mobile,
Canada’s largest new operator, pulled out after its backer,
Amsterdam-based VimpelCom Ltd., decided not to fund its bid.

Refuting Claims

Harper said the results of the auction refuted the claims
of the incumbents and other critics.

“One, they said Canadian companies will not be allowed to
bid,” he said. “That was explicit in some of the ads, you may
recall -- we were giving the airwaves away to foreigners. The
second thing they said was the auction would fail anyway because
the kind of competition we sought in the marketplace was simply
not possible. The third was, following all this, the government
would lose a lot of potential revenue. All three of these things
have turned out to be utterly untrue.”

While declining to comment on Quebecor’s specific business
plans, Harper said the launch by the company’s Videotron unit of
wireless services in Quebec has created “some good market
outcomes as far as the government is concerned.”

“The fact that kind of competition may well extend to
other key regions is a good thing,” he said.

In addition to promoting lower prices, the government wants
to see “good, strong Canadian players” that flourish not only
in the domestic market but potentially abroad, the prime
minister said.

Harper said the revenues from the auction are unlikely to
change the government’s forecast that it will balance its budget
in the year beginning April 2015, since the revenues will be
booked “over a fairly long timeframe.”